I know, its been awhile.  I had stopped blogging because things were going so “normal”, that I just didn’t have much to report.  But something changed this year.

I still don’t understand why it started – or if it was already there and I was just in denial – but L is in a world of pain. Angry, defiant, engaging in behavior that gets him in trouble at school, and worse yet, behavior that could get him seriously hurt or killed.

So we’re back in therapy.  This time, as an entire family.  We’re having to move beyond your standard behavior modification methods, and move into stuff that’s much harder, much more time consuming.  And, both my husband and I are having to look at our own responses, and how those responses help or hurt L.

Maybe I was naive, but I really thought that things would be hard for 6-12 months after placement.  To be two years into it, and in a lot of ways feel like we’re back at square one, is both heartbreaking and frustrating.  More often that I care to admit, I’ve wished L would just go away, so we could have a peaceful home again.  But he is ours, he is our son, and we will never give up.

we all know how this saying ends.

L has been doing so well over the past month.  Certainly not perfect, but really well.  The all of a sudden, this weekend, he started stealing again.  Money from dad’s wallet, item’s from N’s bedroom, being a bad playmate to a little boy who came over, etc.

The old me would have spent hours analyzing this sudden change in behavior, trying to figure out the reasons behind it, so we could come up with a solution.

The new me has come to accept these steps backwards as a temporary thing – we’ve seen in the past that he can move forward, and we know he will again this time.  If anything, we’ll just be a little more observant, stopping him before he can act on his negative impulsis.  But thats all.

This is part of the process of older child adoption – learning to accept what looks like a major step backward as just a temporary blip, and learning to love your child not just in spite of the blips, but because of them.